Even when these Danes are pouring champagne over their heads in slo-mo, getting shoulder massages from a guy in drag, and beckoning "come here and be gorgeous for me" over power-tripping cowpunk, they aren't commanding glamorous excess as much as they're using small, studied gestures to do something bigger than their limited means. — Jenn Pelly

With the help of the Manchester Deaf Centre, directors Sofia Mattioli and Cherise Payne capture a group of hearing-impaired people both young and old in this gorgeous examination of what it means to experience music using little more than your imagination. — Eric Torres

The former Rilo Kiley singer and her Hollywood pals (including Anne Hathaway and Kristen Stewart) bro-out in drag, upending stereotypical notions of what women should be doing in their 30s. — Jenn Pelly

One shot of Lykke Li in a hairnet is all it takes to establish her no-frills cred in this video, which traces a doomed relationship with a tattooed bad boy who’s run out of town—or something worse—for his so-called wickedness. Low-lit bar dancing, moody strolls through wheat fields, brooding looks passed between haunted hearts—it’s equal parts Brokeback Mountain and Terrence Malick, an uneasy calm before the fall. — Jeremy Gordon

LARPing is a lot more difficult than it looks. Provided you don’t want to come across as a fugitive wanted for robbing your local Medieval Times, you’ll need to spend hours honing weapons, practicing swordplay, and questing with your fellow geeks at the local park—not to mention dealing with those waiting to kick your butt when you get back to the real world. But as the "High Road" video demonstrates, modern-day adventuring isn’t about bragging rights, or even the chance to relive an epic time long since lost. It’s about believing in yourself and charging head-on towards the spoils that await, all while knowing that your squire—or, at least, your grandpa—will be there to defend your honor when the assholes strike. — Zoe Camp

If you look to this annual list as a time capsule of styles and aesthetics that permeated the preceding year, look no further than Jesse Hill’s emoji-crazed, fan-made video for Rick Ross’ "Sanctified". There’s much to learn from this funny, flawless evocation of humanity’s newest common tongue—for instance, I did not know the eggplant emoji meant "dick" until I watched this masterpiece. — Corban Goble

If only all of us could sum up our personalities as succinctly and attractively as Shamir Bailey does in the clip for "On the Regular", which throws bugged-out eyes, big smiles, and brightly-colored balls at the viewer as the rapper/singer shows why—yes, yes—he’s that guy. — Jeremy Gordon

Eleven-year-old Maddie Ziegler takes Sia's "Chandelier" by the horns, executing an inventive dance routine while flowing through an apartment. We never leave the residence, but the delicate visual framing of the choreography makes this video’s world feel just as explosive and liberating as the song that inspired it. — Molly Beauchemin

If Tom Cruise’s underrated 2014 thriller Edge of Tomorrow—in which a dishonored army publicist is thrown into combat only to learn that every time he dies fighting an alien enemy, he is resurrected at the beginning of the day before the fight—is the alien-movie version of Groundhog Day, then Vic Mensa’s "Down on My Luck" video is the partying version. In the clip, Mensa keeps replaying a calamitous club outing, slowly learning from his mistakes—getting drugged, getting punched, responding to a text he shouldn’t have responded to—to earn his final reward: a hard-won spliff at the end of the night. — Corban Goble